Thomas Breen photo
Defense attorney Kevin Smith and Qinxuan Pan in court Wednesday.
Fourteen months to the day after Qinxuan Pan allegedly murdered Yale grad student Kevin Jiang, a local pastor sat in a sixth-floor courtroom and prayed for the victim’s family — as well as for the suspect, for a grieving local Chinese community, and for justice.
Moments later, another session ended within minutes with those prayers left hanging.
That was the scene Wednesday morning at the state courthouse at 235 Church St.
Two family friends of Jiang’s mother sat in a third-row pew and watched state Superior Court Judge Gerald Harmon continue the state’s ongoing criminal case against Pan until June 2.
The hearing took place exactly one year and two months after Pan, a now-incarcerated former MIT artificial intelligence researcher, allegedly shot and killed 26-year-old Yale grad student Kevin Jiang near Jiang’s fiancee’s apartment on Lawrence Street in East Rock on Feb. 6, 2021.
The substance of the case didn’t come up at all during Wednesday’s two-minute hearing. Rather, the judge granted Pan and his defense attorney Kevin Smith another roughly two months to review evidence that the state has gathered against him. (Click here, here, here and here for previous articles about how the past four hearings in this case have all been focused on that exact same issue of Pan accessing state-gathered discovery.)
What was different on Wednesday was the appearance in the audience section of the courtroom of two of Jiang’s mom’s friends.
They declined to be named or photographed for this story. They did speak with the Independent about why they showed up — and why they’re still following the case 14 months after Jiang’s murder.
“I can say that many Chinese in this town still have some concern about this case,” one of the attendees said. He said he is Chinese, and is a pastor at a Baptist church in a nearby town. “This is a big case in the Chinese community.” (Jiang was Chinese-American; Pan was born in Shanghai.)
Why does the pastor think members of the local Chinese community are so invested in this case?
“We can see that [Jiang] was a good kid, actually a role model for a younger generation,” he said. Jiang studied at Yale, had a “very solid academic background,” and was a military veteran. “This murder case has really shocked us in the Chinese community.”
“We pray for the victim, for the mom,” he added. “She’s suffering.”
“Of course, I will pray for Pan as well,” he concluded. “But justice needs to be done.”
